


i'm young and i'm underpaid

by shyimmortal



Category: The Creatures | Cow Chop RPF
Genre: A good amount of gen cow chop too, Fake Chop, M/M, Miscommunication, Non-Graphic Violence, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Watch this space for updated pairing and character tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-10-27 22:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17775548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shyimmortal/pseuds/shyimmortal
Summary: Alec didn't even know what the Nova crew's sniper sounded like for a good six months after they started working together.The fact that he's slow to pick up the rest of the story shouldn't surprise anyone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is kind of more of a prologue than anything else. i really just needed to get this out there.
> 
> would you believe i've been meaning to write this for a few weeks now? saturday's video shocked me just as much as anyone else. 
> 
> also, these are fake!au characterizations, based off of real people but not intended to represent real people. please don't freak on me.

It takes four different heists and almost half a year before Alec hears Nova’s sniper speak.

They’d started - not teaming up, exactly, not even unofficially running together because Aleks still loved to shit talk Nova over the comm system too much for their crews to be considered allied, but they’d been on the same jobs off and on since Alec got scouted. He couldn’t tell how long they’d had the system in place. Aleks just snorted and rubbed his eyes with one hand when he asked, about two months in, just off the tail end of a bank hit that left Alec with a twisted ankle and far more money than he’d ever had in his life.

“The Fakes just like to fuck with me, I think, assigning us jobs together,” Aleks said, tucking his legs up underneath him where he had curled against the arm of the couch, clicking through the TV. “They’re not huge fans of us running our shit on this side of the city, so they’re trying to make us self-detonate.”

Alec, still new and feeling out his place in the crew, _his_ crew, Immortal’s crew, had swallowed and nodded and let Aleks pick the movie.

So it had been the bank job, plus a storefront robbery and a corporate hit. All along he’d heard Nova’s steady drawl in his earpiece, heard their getaway driver snap her gum, heard Aleks and Nova’s second-in-command bicker about their armories and how much you’re supposed to water cacti. Alec tried to tune it out most of the time, just because stuff like safe cracking took focus, but the low drone of voices in his ear was a good distraction sometimes when he was pressed up tight in a facility closet, the click of the night security’s shoes sharp on the tile outside the door.

And through all of that he knew they had a sniper. Obviously, they had a sniper - that was part of the entire reason Aleks was willing to take the mandatory pay cut that was running a job with two crews, because the two of them didn’t have resources like that.

“Yet,” Aleks would snap, hip bumping Alec away from the kitchen sink in the apartment they shared - nice, well-decorated, small but high above Los Santos where no one could fuck with them. “I’ve got feelers out, we won’t have to run with those idiots forever. Just focus on your shit, Paul.”

Alec had let himself get nudged to dish drying duty and didn’t say anything back.

It was a bit of an open secret, the mess that the Immortal crew had turned into towards the end, there. Two dead, two AWOL, and a second-in-command who had up and left just hours after a massive territory overturn.

The bigger secret was the patch of sunburnt-pink skin against Aleks’ left shoulder, stretching from the edge of his collarbone and down halfway to his elbow.

Alec hadn’t seen it until he’d lived with the guy for a month, and even then neither of them had mentioned the soul mark. Marks stayed even after death, in most cases. Alec knew enough about the dead-to-living ratio of Aleks’ past crew to not say anything. He kind of liked not being murdered in cold blood, thanks.

He’d officially joined a few months later, after the fires had mostly gone out. He hadn’t dug for information, and Aleks hadn’t given him much, but what he did know was that they were nothing if not short-staffed.

So Nova had a sniper. He was never on location with the rest of them, instead stationed high on a roof across the street, usually, to watch their backs and keep exits open. That made sense.

What _didn’t_ make sense was the fact that never, not once, had Alec heard him say _anything_ over the ear piece.

He wasn’t obsessed with it or anything. It was just _weird._

On the third heist, sometime in between hiding in the facility closet and cracking the safe in the CFO’s office, he figured that Nova’s crew probably have a separate comm line. It would make sense - their crews aren’t allied, so there’s probably times they have to talk shop more openly than they would want to with Aleks listening in.

He put that thought away in his mind, suppressed a snort as the driver teased Nova for taking three shots to down a security guard he’d ran into on the second floor, and set to work on the safe.

The fourth job shouldn’t be as complicated as it ends up being. It’s a pretty simple hit and run robbery on a shady pawn shop that fronts for a shadier drug ring, and Alec has done about six similar jobs by now with just him and Aleks. The guy running the ring is a little infamous, so the Kingpin had set them up with Nova, but all things considered it shouldn’t have been more than twenty minutes, in and out.

Obviously, because Alec is pretty sure his life is cursed, it doesn’t go like that.

Alec is behind the register, pistol to the shopkeeper’s head, nervously watching Nova’s second-in-command kick at the bent knees of one of the hired muscle for the ring when a gunshot sounds out.

Aleks makes a punched-out noise from over the comm system. Alec’s stomach sinks.

“What the fuck was that?” Alec is asking before he can think, words overlapping with Nova mirroring the sentiment in his ear.

“Immortal, what the fuck - “

“I’m good,” Aleks says, voice thick with what Alec hopes isn’t blood, then groans in pain one more time. “We - shit, we gotta go, Lindsey - “

“Got it.”

“You, out the back.”

Alec startles, looks up, just barely remembering to keep the gun trained on the shopkeeper. “What? What, where are you going?”

“I’m right behind you.” The second-in-command - Hundar, Alec’s mind skips a beat to supply the codename - straightens up and swiftly shoots the man at his feet in the temple before switching aim to the shopkeeper. “Gonna clean this up a bit first. Go, make sure Immortal gets in the get-away alright.”

Alec watches the man crumble to Hundar’s shoes, blood leaking onto the scuffed wooden flooring, and books it to the back door.

Lindsey is talking in his ear, tone tight but forcibly calm. Alec shoves the door open with a shoulder, gun up and ready, and emerges into the back alley behind the store.

He looks left, sees nothing, looks right and -

Fuck. Maybe he really _is_ cursed. That would explain a lot.

“No funny moves.” The man in front of him spits on the ground, gun aimed squarely between Alec’s eyes, and gestures just barely with it. “Gun down.”

“That’s not a really good deal for me, man.” Alec raises his hands, placating, but keeps his pistol pointing at the sky. “How about we both go, on three?”

The man smirks, lip pulling up and turning his face eerie in the yellow-green glow of the handful of lights that are all they have to fight the dark of Los Santos night back here. Alec, vaguely, recognizes him as one of the runners for the ring from the briefing they had put together while planning the whole heist. “Gun down and empty your pockets. Now, before I empty them for you.”

Alec blinks, purposefully slow. He can’t hear Hundar inside, and the earpiece chatter is just Nova cursing Aleks out and some background rustling. “Not one for small talk, I guess. Okay, dude, okay.”

He makes a show of clicking the safety on before bending, still slowly, at the knees. He’s not about to just drop the thing onto the concrete - that’s irresponsible, Aleks’ voice rasps at him in the back of his mind.

The man watches him, impatient, jerking his own gun to follow Alec’s movement. “Let’s go. You don’t have all night, the cops’ll be here any minute. They’ll be even less nice to you then I’m being right now.”

Alec tilts his head a degree to the side. “Right. Sure.”

Lindsey had shown him the signal jamming set up in her dashboard on the way to the second job, patting it like a prized show dog. Even if anyone had bothered to call in, LSPD still wouldn’t be getting there any time soon.

He’s just placing his gun on the cold ground when he hears it - movement from inside, towards the back door. The dull clunk of Hundar’s thick black boots.

The man hears it too. He jerks his eyes to the door, gun wavering between Alec and the sound.

Alec watches the barrel of the gun, adrenaline spiking and leaving his breath shaky in his chest. The guy looks unstable, suddenly, even more than before, and Alec doesn’t really want to see how he’ll react when Hundar, all muscle and an overpowered machine gun, bursts out onto the scene.

He sees the gun twitch, from him to the door, and as he blinks hard against the sudden itch of the contacts he has in he can see tendons tighten in the man’s wrist.

Then, a voice cuts through the buzz of panic in Alec’s mind.

“Duck, dude.”

He drops to the ground before he can consider it, curling over top of his gun, folding his hands over the back of his neck. The next second there’s a far-off crack from behind him, and he hears the telltale sound of a body falling to the ground just a few feet away.

“Holy fuck,” Alec breathes out into the space between his face and the pavement. His heart jumps, flutters, and all he can do for the moment is squeeze his eyes shut tight.

There’s a laugh in his ear - through the earpiece, he realizes, maybe belatedly as he moves to grab his pistol then and flip the safety off. “Sounds like a thanks to me.”

Hundar finally shoves through the back door, gun trained like a SWAT team member, and he takes one look at the man on the ground before leveling an unimpressed look at Alec. “Couldn’t handle a one on one? Really?”

“He surprised me,” Alec defends himself, following quick on Hundar’s heels as they duck down the alley, around the corner of a store a few buildings down from the pawn shop. “Is Immortal okay?”

“I know about as much as you do, my man,” Hundar says, dryly. “How ‘bout we get to the car before we try debriefing?”

“Lindsey’s coming up in ten,” that voice says in his ear. Alec actually glances at Hundar once, quickly, because he’s kind of not sure that he isn’t imagining things. Hearing voices is a PTSD thing, right? “Mind swinging by to grab me? Or am I s’posed to take the bus?”

“No, yeah, you should probably get out of there.” Hundar takes a sharp left, and as Alec follows him towards the main road he can see the dark shape of Lindsey’s car, headlights off, crawling towards them from the shadows. “I can’t believe you took a shot and haven’t bailed the perch yet. You have a death wish.”

Lindsey barely has the brakes on before Hundar pulls open the back door and shoves Alec in, slamming it behind him and then jogging to the passenger’s seat.

“Where’s Immortal?” he asks immediately. The back seat is empty except for him, and Alec has a split second to worry that they’ve been backstabbed before his earpiece buzzes to life.

“I got him,” Nova says, sounding flat and tired. “We’re headed to your place. The idiot has a bullet in his thigh that we’re going to have to work on.”

“Hope you have tiled floors,” Hundar mutters, one hand on the handle above the window as Lindsey drives slowly, smooth like a panther, through the dark Los Santos streets. “Easier clean up.”

“You’re fucking heartless, you know that?” That’s Aleks, and his voice is low and harsh but seems with-it enough to string words together, at least. Alec relaxes just a degree back into the car seat, fingers twitching in their grip on his gun. “That was a set up, Hundar. You got bad intel.”

“One guy catching you trying to rob him blind and getting a lucky shot isn’t a set up.” Alec could practically hear Hundar rolling his eyes from the front seat. “My intel’s fine. I grabbed some bonus loot on the way out, anyways. Geoff will be happy with that at least.”

Aleks makes a grumbling noise but drops off, leaving Alec to swallow back the slow wash of the adrenaline crash that happens after jobs like this. Lindsey’s car is warm from running all night, and even though Los Santos never gets that cold during the winter it’s still a nice change. His hands shake, a little, as he sets the safety on his gun and tucks it away to fold his hands between his knees.

They’re pulling through about nine blocks south of their apartment when Alec realizes it. “Hey, uh.” He twitches when Hundar casts a look over his shoulder, but continues on. “What about your sniper?”

There’s a pause, and then Hundar lets out a bark of a laugh before turning around to face the street again. “The kid’ll make his way back to our place. He’s independent like that.”

Alec, after realizing that that was probably partially a dig at him, frowns.

He lets it go, though, partly because Hundar scares the shit out of him and partly because he doesn’t want to sound weird about the whole thing. Lindsey parks and they file out of the car neatly, Hundar stowing his gun in the trunk but shouldering a heavy-looking backpack instead before leading the way up to their place.

“Oh my god, finally, he won’t shut up,” is the first thing Nova says when they bust into the apartment. Alec pockets his keys and looks immediately for Aleks, instincts trained even after only six months.

He’s propped up on one of their kitchen chairs, leg balanced on another, a thick layer of gauze wrapped around his thigh. He looks like shit, Alec thinks, but at the same time his heart settles its nervous beating just a bit when Aleks tilts his head up enough to make eye contact.

“I hear you got fuckin’ ambushed, dude,” Aleks says, as Alec rushes forward to sit down next to him. “Weak, man. You’re a fucking disappointment.”

“Says the guy who got shot,” Alec replies quickly. Hundar drops his backpack onto the kitchen table next to a pile of junk mail that they’ve accumulated for about a month now and starts rooting through it for god-knows-what. “At least I came out of the job with the normal amount of holes in my body.”

“You’re awful. I never should have hired you.” Aleks’ voice is flat and dismissive but his hand twitches from where it’s resting, motionless, on the table. He doesn’t say anything when Alec takes it tightly. “Leaving me to get rescued by fuckin’ Nova’s crew. It’s a disgrace.”

“Don’t sound so thankful,” Nova says. He’s standing against their kitchen counter, having backed up once Alec and the rest of them got through the front door. His hair is pulled back in a bun but about half of it is falling out, and he has a swipe of dark red blood all the way from the top edge of the black gloves he wears and almost up to his elbow. “My crew’s the entire reason your boy’s still with us, I hear.”

“Aw, fuck that.” Aleks’ grip tightens almost painfully as Hundar approaches with what looks like a scapel and start carefully unwinding the gauze on his thigh. “That sniper of yours has the fuckin’ shakiest hands I’ve ever seen.”

Aleks lets out a tight breath and uses his free hand to rake his hair back from his face. He’s in-between bleach jobs, and it falls dirty blonde in his eyes before transitioning rapidly to brown. “Anyways. We’re square with this job, right?”

“Close enough to.” Hundar hunkers down on the floor and sticks Aleks with a syringe to the soft tissue on the inside of his thigh, entirely without explanation. “I managed to get some of their customer data before we had to ditch, plus the cash Nova grabbed before saving your ass. Geoff will be happy enough.”

“Thank god.” Aleks tips his head back against the wooden back of the chair, breathing thin but hard. “Let’s just get this thing out of me, so we can all go our separate ways, alright?”

Alec swallows against a wave of nausea but grips Aleks’ hand back twice as hard as Hundar roots the bullet out before stitching the whole thing up, perfunctory but neat. Lindsey and Nova have migrated by that point further into the kitchen, whispering between each other, and Alec tries not to listen in too obviously.

The whole thing, amateur surgery and all, takes about an hour. Aleks semi-passes out at the thirty minute mark, and Alec lets his head bob down against his shoulder as he makes a very vain attempt at not straight up puking through the process.

Finally, after what feels like days, Hundar finishes the stitches and slaps fresh wound dressing onto Aleks’ thigh. “He’ll live,” he grunts, straightening up quick enough to make his knees crack. “You guys should get the money wired to you within the next two days, assuming Ramsey is fine with us only sort of following through on the mission parameters.”

“Sounds good,” Alec says, low and begrudging. Aleks makes some kind of noise against his neck, more grunt than words, but the sign of life seems to assuage Hundar enough to finish packing his backpack up. “Hey, um, also. Tell your sniper thanks, for me.”

Hundar actually snorts at that, slinging the arm of his backpack over one shoulder while Lindsey and Nova reemerge from the far edge of the kitchen. “Tell him yourself,” he says, already halfway to the front door. “I’m sure we’ll see you two sooner rather than later.”

With that, the three of them slip out the front door, shutting it with a click behind them. The apartment is suddenly quiet and motionless, and Alec once again swallows back something nervous and sick that threatens to climb up his throat from behind his ribs.

After a few seconds of sitting like that he nudges Aleks into a sitting position, wincing when he makes a low, pained noise at the movement. “Alright, boss,” he says, getting one arm around Aleks’ waist and plucking his earpiece belatedly out of his ear with the other hand. “I bet bed sounds great right about now.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so how about that bloody alec in today's vid, huh

“No, no way. Not happening.”

Alec suppresses the urge to roll his eyes and instead makes a big show of snapping the dish towels he’s folding sharply. “It’s smarter than me running solo jobs.”

“You’re assuming that all of them add up to the equivalent of me. Which I doubt.” Aleks doesn’t look up from his phone screen, sprawled across their couch with one leg bent up and the other lying flat. “I don’t like that they just think they can rent you out, anyways. That’s not how this works.”

“They’re promising me a higher cut than they usually give.”

“Yeah, because they won’t have to pay you if they  _ get you shot _ .”

“You’re one to talk, boss.” 

Aleks shifts, and Alec can see the tightness at the corners of his mouth even if he doesn’t say anything. The stitches in his thigh have almost healed up, but Aleks always takes awhile to bounce back from these things. He doesn’t like to sit still. “No way. Tell Nova to find some other kid to entrap.”

Alec doesn’t respond immediately, just ducks his head back down to finish folding the towels. He’d gotten the text from an unrecognized burner number yesterday, and had ended up calling just to confirm that, yes, Nova crew actually did want to borrow him out for a few jobs while Aleks recovered. 

He hadn’t realized Lindsey could sound that intimidating over the phone. It was kind of freaky.

Alec finishes up folding everything and wanders into the kitchen to put it all away. When he comes back to the couch Aleks has shifted so that his legs are on the ground, leaving space next to him.

It doesn’t feel optional. Alec sits down.

“What’s the job,” Aleks says, flat like it’s not even a question. He doesn’t look at Alec, keeps messing with his phone, but Alec startles anyways.

“Uh. It’s a hired hit, but they mostly need me because the guy they’re after has some shit tied up in his computer. They want to make sure we get to it before his stuff gets thrown out or dug through when they find his body. I guess they don’t really have anyone good at that kind of thing.”

“And they went to you?” Aleks scoffs. “You’re, like, a year into hacking anything. Their standards are lower than I thought.”

“I think our prices are cheaper than most other people,” Alec says, mostly joking but still twisting his hands together in his lap. “Plus I’m not _that_ bad.”

“You’re something, alright.” Aleks wiggles his fingers at Alec until he begrudgingly hands over the soda he had grabbed in the kitchen, and watches Aleks drain about half of it before he talks again. “Okay. Fine.”

Alec blinks. “Fine?”

“Fine. But if they get you shot I’m going to drop kick your corpse into the ocean.” Aleks gestures with the stolen soda violently. “Don’t let them get any ideas, either. Once I’m in fighting shape again we’re cutting back on the co-op runs.”

“Is that even a call you can make?” 

Aleks’ mouth twists down in a frown, and pulls the soda can back towards him. “We can’t get too dependent on them. Watch - the second we do, they’re going to try to absorb us. Just eat us up.”

“...What?”

“I’m serious, it’s classic.” He shifts, looking like he wants to pull his legs up under him but deciding against it at the last minute, and Alec distantly wonders if he’s even been taking the painkillers they have stashed up. “They know we’re weak, low in numbers, and that we need their resources. They get us to trust them, and then boom - we’re giving up our slice of the city and running with the Nova crew full time.”

Aleks props his elbow against the back of the couch to run a hand through his hair, taking another swig of the Coke that Alec knows he’s not getting back now. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly ready to let Immortal die in a fire.”

Something about the movement of Aleks’ arm draws Alec’s eyes down, to where the strap of the tank top he has on cuts a line through the splotchy mess of his mark. It covers his entire shoulder, stretching from a thin lick of red on the side of his neck to down his arm, where it rounds off. It looks awful, burnt in on top of his tattoos, deep red and painful-looking.

Alec - he doesn’t know a ton about marks, beyond what’s just kind of common knowledge, or some approximation of it based on TV. His parents didn’t have any, and if he’s ended up with one it’s completely unbeknownst to him. They vary pretty widely, though, and have a habit of changing over time. The whole way you get them in the first place isn’t exactly agreed upon, either - the soulmate theory is old as hell and critiqued a ton too, but the marriage rate of marked couples puts any other one to shame all the same.

Aleks’ mark has looked just like that, red and sore and inflamed, from the day Alec met him. It’s never looked any better. If it actually hurts, Aleks doesn’t let on.

He lets Aleks finish the soda, quiet, and takes the empty can when he slings it across the couch to him. “I’ll make sure they understand that.”

He texts Lindsey’s burner back and the job gets scheduled for that weekend. The mark lives alone in an apartment across the city, and Aleks makes fun of Alec for a solid twenty minutes when he tells him that Hundar’s going to pick him up to drive to the apartment.

“I hope he brings you a corsage. Will you let me take pictures, at least? Prom night is supposed to be special.”

The only thing that keeps Alec from punching Aleks is the recent gunshot wound, and he channels that energy instead into very violently yanking on his gloves. “You’re a fucking asshole, you know.”

“That’s all that keeps me going, these days.” Aleks grins sharply at him when Alec rounds on him. “Gotta toughen you up, anyways. That’s what good crew leaders do, right?”

“What, bully their only employee?” Alec pats himself down, checking that he has everything. He packs lightly, for the most part, just his gun and some knives tucked away. It helps to not be carrying a bunch of bullshit around when you’re expected to crawl through windows because the guys you’re running a job with are insane. “You’re lucky we don’t have HR.”

“You’ve figured out my greatest weapon - lack of accountability and paperwork.” Aleks toasts him with the beer he’s holding, kicking his feet against the kitchen cabinets. He likes to sit on the counters, and Alec doesn’t feel like picking the particular fight about scuffing. “Remember what I said about not getting shot.”

“I’ll do my best to learn from your mistakes.” Alec winces when that gets him a kick to the side and dances back, out of range. “Try not to get yourself even more injured, boss.”

Aleks winks, big and cheesy, at him as the shitty flip phone tucked in one of Alec’s pockets buzzes. He checks it, and shoulders the one bag he keeps some of his break-in equipment in. “Hundar’s here. I should be back early in the morning, assuming everything goes well.”

“I won’t wait up.” 

“Yeah, thanks.”

Hundar’s car - or, probably Lindsey’s, technically - is idling down the street when Alec finally gets out of the apartment. He waves a little at Hundar, who unlocks the door and gives him just enough time to slip into the passenger’s seat before hitting the gas.

“Excited for your first field trip without the big bro?” Hundar asks, shooting Alec an amused look as he directs them easily through the Saturday night traffic. “He’s gonna be lonely, all by himself.”

Alec snorts, settling into the seat and trying not to look like he’s internally having a bit of a mini panic attack. “It’s kind of like leaving a cat home alone. I’m worried the curtains will be all clawed up when I get back.”

That earns him a loud laugh, higher-pitched than he would have thought, and Hundar smacks the steering wheel with one palm. “So you do have a spine, good. Nova was worried how long you’d last under Immortal if you didn’t.”

Alec laughs too, awkwardly, and watches the streetlights pass through his window. “Speaking of Nova…”

“He’s meeting us there.” Hundar takes a right, and rolls through a yellow light. “Lindsey’s at base for tonight, so it’s just the four of us.”

“Four?”

“We’ve got our sight installed in the hotel right next to the mark’s building. Our sniper,” Hundar clarifies, when Alec tips a confused look at him. “We’re not thinking we’ll have to use him, but without Lindsey we need someone to keep an eye out for action on the ground.”

“Oh, right. Uh. Makes sense.”

Alec busies himself with getting his comm system set up while Hundar drives, and by the time they slow and park in a dark corner of the not-so-great part of town he’s all plugged in and his heart is picking up.

They find Nova outside the apartment, hood pulled up and posture casual against the wall as he leans against it. He nods at them as they approach, and not for the first time Alec is keenly aware that he’s dealing with a guy who’s been in the game for about as long as he can remember - there’s something really unsettling about that knowledge. Even for how chill the guy seems, Alec remembers a time when he was basically in line for the throne that was Los Santos hierarchy, should the Kingpin slip.

Nothing really changed when his crew went underground a few years ago. It all just got harder to see.

“All set?” 

“Should be.” Hundar tosses Nova the car keys and heads around the side of the building to one of the delivery entrances. “Let’s get this done, Immortal’ll make us pay late fees if we keep his kid past curfew.”

Alec rolls his eyes but follows behind, and definitely doesn’t jump when Nova slaps him on the back and laughs. 

They get in the building just fine, and things are pretty dead silent as they take the stairs up to the eleventh floor. 

“Cameras in the elevators,” Nova explains lowly as they climb. “And only the main stairwell has them in this building, so the service one is dark.”

Alec tries very hard not to show how out of breath he is and just nods. They eventually make it, and the end goal ends up being a very unassuming apartment door - number 1103. 

Alec presses up against the wall behind Nova as he picks the lock, and winces when it creaks open against stiff hinges. 

“There’s no one here, dude, chill.” Nova secures the room quickly, perfunctory, and nods them in behind him. “Alright, let’s get you all Spiderman’d out.”

“I still can’t believe this is the best plan you guys came up with,” Alec says under his breath, heading through the empty apartment to the door at the back that leads out to the balcony. “I’m going to fucking die.”

“No, you’re not, because then Immortal would have  _ us _ murdered,” Hundar says, letting himself out onto the balcony.

“He’d kill us himself, dude.” Nova follows, and Alec reluctantly trails behind. “The mark’s super paranoid. His front door security’s going to be crazy, so we gotta do the next best thing.”

“No one who lives on the tenth floor locks their balcony door.” Hundar grins, dropping his pack on the wooden floor. “Hey, all you have to do is drop. It would be way harder if we expected you to climb the building  _ up _ a floor.”

“None of this is assuring me at all,” Alec grumbles, and watches as Hundar nonchalantly hitches a leg over the waist-height fencing that boxes the balcony in. “It’s kind of like you’re trying to be as non-reassuring as possible, actually.”

“Look, once we get in there all you have to do is worry about the computer. Hundar and I will take care of everything else.” Nova flips his hood off and re-ties his hair back, tighter. His sleeves slide down his arms, revealing tattoos and strong forearms. “We’ll get to leave out the front door, like normal people, if that reassures you at all.”

“You know, somehow it doesn’t.”

Hundar makes quick work of securing what Nova cheerily calls a ‘just in case’ rope to the balcony’s wrought-iron fencing, and after giving it a few test tugs Hundar’s the first to go.

Alec peers off the side of the balcony and down to the floor below. It probably isn’t actually that far - ten, maybe twelve feet. What’s actually making his stomach twist is the fact that he can see the pattern of traffic below them, and he really doesn’t feel like falling eleven floors down and straight into that. 

Hundar goes first, dropping down easily and quietly enough. Nova follows, pausing for just a second to shoot Alec what he probably thinks is a comforting grin, but just looks kind of crazy considering what he’s doing. He drops, and then Alec is alone on a balcony and not freaking out about it.

He gives himself a split second to look up at the sky and think very hard about the decisions he’s made in his life so far that led up to this moment. And then he drops, too. 

They fall into silence this close to the mark, and Hundar gestures for Nova to go first. The door isn’t locked, and Nova waggles his eyebrows at them before slipping inside.

The apartment is a mess, small and dark. Alec gets nudged one direction, towards a low table sitting in front of a TV and a broken-in armchair, while Nova and Hundar creep silently as possible towards what he guesses is the mark’s bedroom. He lets them get to work and drops into a crouch in front of the table, pulling the laptop that was tossed onto it towards him and booting it up.

It’s an old thing, clunky and dusty, but it starts up alright and it’s easy enough to get into the mark’s account. His security isn’t difficult to breach, it’s just a little chaotic, and it takes Alec way longer than it should to track down all the data that Hundar had briefed him on to transfer to the small hard drive he brought. Some of the shit’s pretty dense, so he ends up sitting there watching the download bar move and listening for sounds of trouble from the bedroom.

He can tell when the mark must wake up, because there’s the briefest sound of struggle and a cut-off voice that sounds like one of them is covering his mouth. The apartment walls are thin, cheaply made, so they hadn’t wanted to do anything too loud. 

“I just have a few questions for him, first,” Hundar had said during Alec’s quick phone briefing, tone deceptively calm. “So we’ll get those out of the way first.”

If they’re questioning him Alec certainly can’t hear it, and he focuses instead on clearing up some of his tracks on the computer. The download finishes after a tense moment, and just as he’s unplugging the hard drive and making sure he didn’t leave any marks on the laptop Nova reemerges from the bedroom. 

“All good?” He gives him a thumbs up when Alec nods, and moves back towards the balcony door to peer outside. “Hundar’s finishing things up but then we should be good to go. Easy, right?”

There’s a brief sound of movement from the bedroom, the door left open so Alec can hear it better, although it stops after a few minutes and Hundar reemerges. “We can bounce, unless you wanna take anything else around here.”

“Nah.” Nova’s tapping the toe of one sneaker. “Geoff wants the scene to be clean as possible when the police find this dude. Which shouldn’t be for awhile, sounds like - I don’t think he’s got anyone who’ll miss him.”

“Not so sure about that.” 

Alec jumps, hand automatically going up to the earpiece that he’d forgotten about. Hundar does the same, and Nova’s posture straightens up in an instant. 

“We got company?” 

“Your dude might have had a panic button.” The sniper’s voice is familiar, now, if only because Alec knows who to expect on the other end of the line. “Sirens incoming. You may want to rethink that whole ‘walking out the front door’ exit strat.”

“Shit,” Nova breaths, sticking his head out the balcony door now and looking around. “I don’t see them.”

“They’re about three blocks, plus the time it’ll take them to get upstairs to you.” There’s a clicking noise through the comm system, and Alec rushes to pack the hard drive away and straighten up to stand near Hundar. “I can try picking some off but I don’t have the best angle for that. You guys need to bail.”

“Yeah, no shit, Jakob,” Nova replies, although he doesn’t sound as worried as Alec would think. The name takes him by surprise, too, but not all of their crew go by fake names, he guesses. He doesn’t really either, after all. “What direction are they coming from? Near our car?” 

“Opposite. I’d say go back down the way you came.”

Alec blinks, digests that information, then looks at Hundar. “Oh, no way. Fuck that.”

Hundar just grins and rolls one shoulder to stretch it out, then the other. “Good thing we warmed up with just one floor, huh?”

Nova takes a look at the both of them before sighing and turning out the balcony door. “We don’t got enough ‘just in case’ rope for this whole building.”

Hundar goes first, easily dropping himself down from the balcony and out of sight, with the logic that he has to run and grab the car. Alec looks to Nova to follow him, but Nova jerks his head at Alec, and then at the balcony fencing. 

“I’ll be after you,” he says, shoving his gloved hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Gotta keep the rental in one piece. I don’t want you bringing up the rear.”

Alec blinks and hears the sniper snort out a laugh in his ear piece. “Uh. Alright, then.” 

Logically, when he looks over the edge of the balcony this time, he knows he’s technically closer to the ground than when he went down off the eleventh floor one. The fact that he knows he’s going to keep doing it until he touches pavement one way or another, though, makes everything telescope away from him for a solid moment before he swallows and finally throws one leg, then the other, over the fencing.

It’s ok until floor five. He manages to awkwardly swing his feet in just enough to land behind the fencing of each balcony, land with a thump, and only fall on his ass the one time. It helps that most people don’t keep a ton of shit on their balconies, although floor seven has a pair of collapsed lawn chairs that look like Hundar maybe fell on them. 

Floor five is when the sirens get louder, and then blaring loud, and he can see the rapid blue-red cycling of light as the police pull up around the corner of the building. Maybe it distracts him, or his adrenaline shakes get worse, but when he drops from five to four he catches one sneaker on the edge of the metal fencing and basically faceplants into a clay planter sitting in the corner of the balcony. 

It doesn’t break, which is either good or bad, depending how you look at it, but Alec grunts with surprise and feels the sudden rush of heat that is blood from a head wound. “Oh, fuck. Fuck this whole thing.”

“You fucking went ragdoll, man,” the sniper - Jakob? - says in his ear as Alec hauls himself off the ground and touches his temple with one hand. It’s bloody red when he pulls it away and he allows himself a second to groan in pain one more time. “Watch it.”

“That’s some great fuckin’ advice,” Alec grunts, and tries to wipe the blood away on his pants. The last thing he needs is slippery hands - he still has more floors to go. “I don’t see you doing this parkour shit.”

“It’s not so much parkour as it is dropping and falling, right?” Jakob sounds like he’s having a fucking great time - why wouldn’t he be, Alec thinks, blinking and wiping blood away from his eyes with his sleeve this time before he shakily approaches the fencing again. He gets to be all tucked away in a hotel with a gun and the ability to use the stairs like a normal human being. “I’ve got some long-ass limbs, I think I could handle that.”

“Cheers to that, dude. Congrats.”

“Damn, dude, you got me. Watch it, or Nova’ll lap you. He’s almost caught up.”

Alec shakes his head, works to fight a grin, and prepares to drop down to floor three. “Nova crew are all fuckin’ dicks, dude.”

He’s never been as happy in his entire life as when his feet his solid pavement, and he thinks for a split second about kissing the sidewalk before the rush catches up to him. He glances up, presses his sleeve against the gash in his temple as blood tries to run into his eyes, and just catches Nova as he slings himself neatly onto the first floor and then down to the ground.

“Cops are spreading out,” Jakob adds in the comm line, warning, as Nova shakes his feet out and claps Alec on the shoulder before taking off at a jog away from the building. “Evasive maneuvers, boss.”

“Why did this have to be the day Lindsey stayed at home,” Nova gripes under his breath, quiet enough that Alec only hears it through the ear piece. “Lay low ‘till they leave, Jakob, then meet back at the warehouse.”

“You know it.”

They run for a little bit before the car from earlier, innocuous and black, pulls up next to them with Hundar waving at the wheel. Alec has a deep sense of deja vu when he hauls his ass into the backseat, although things do feel considerably different now. Exhibit A - the fact that he might be bleeding out.

“Damn, you did a number on yourself,” Nova says, twisted entirely around in the passenger seat to look at him while Hundar takes a circuitous, back alley route that makes Alec a little sick if he tries to follow it. “Put some pressure on that. ‘S not even my fault, you cracking your skull open, and Aleks is  _ still _ going to beat my ass.”

Alec yanks his sleeve down to cover his hand and tries to bundle up the loose fabric before pressing it to the sharp pain he can feel in his temple. Maybe it’s the head wound, but it takes him a slow moment before the words set in. “Aleks?”

It’s so quick that he really only sees it because Nova’s facing him dead on, but his eyes widen just a degree before returning to normal. “Immortal. Whatever he’s going by these days.” He turns back around at that and settles into the seat, kicking one foot up on the dashboard even when Hundar tsks at him. “Want us to get you back to him, or try to piece you together first?”

Alec doesn’t respond immediately, lets the rumble of the engine and the searing heat in at his forehead attempt at focusing his mind. He forgets, sometimes, how long Nova and Aleks have run in the same circles, in the same city. Maybe it’s not weird that he knows his real name. Hearing it said out loud, though, feels - wrong. “Back to him. Um. We have first aid shit at home.”

“‘Course you do,” Hundar says. Nova doesn’t respond in any way other than nodding and then passing Alec a bunch of fast food napkins from the glove compartment to hold against his temple. 

“D’you think Lindsey will be pissed if he gets blood on the car seats?” Jakob pipes up through the comm line, and it’s probably a testament to how beat Alec feels that he doesn’t jump at the threat of that. 

“Please,” Hundar snorts, taking a smooth left turn through a red light. “Her fleet’s seen way worse. If we could get all that fuckin’ milkshake out of the interior, nothing can stop us.” 

Alec balls up the napkins and presses them in between his head and the glass of the window and tries very hard to follow the conversation and not just pass out, or something. They must be going some kind of bullshit way to lose any possible tail because it takes way longer to get back then it did to drive to the apartment earlier that night, leaving room for what feels to Alec like a crazy amount of chatter.

Which, he’s coming from a two-man crew. But still.

Finally they pull up at Alec’s building. There’s a weird moment where Nova looks like he wants to walk Alec up, considering, you know. The head wound. Alec shrugs it off, though, and passes the hard drive over to him before climbing out of the car. 

“You should have everything you need on there,” he says, taking a moment to make sure his legs can hold his weight before letting go of the hood of the car. “Lemme know if it’s missing anything.”

“Sounds good.” Hundar’s eyebrows are drawn tight together, but he doesn’t say anything to stop Alec from backing up from the car and towards the building. “We’ll be in touch.”

“I’m sure.” 

Aleks, because he’s a hypocrite and definitely likes Alec more than he likes to pretend, is still awake when he shuffles through the front door. He makes a lot of loud squawking noises at Alec and makes him sit on the kitchen counter - obviously the best place to sit when you’re bleeding profusely - while he does a mostly shoddy job of cleaning the wound.   


“It actually doesn’t look that bad,” Aleks says, after finally getting Alec mostly cleaned up and slapping a butterfly bandage on it. “You just have a lot of blood in your head.”

“That sounds scientific as fuck, boss.” Alec’s eyes are mostly closed at this point, and he’s leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs so Aleks can get at his forehead. “I’m really glad I won’t be the first person to die in a gardening-related accident.”

Aleks snorts and does his version of awkward hovering for a little while until Alec can finally convince him that he’s not going to die in his sleep or anything. It’s past four in the morning when he finally gets in bed after a quick shower, and it’s the best sleep he’s had in ages. 

Aleks is weird, careful and quieter than usual the following few days. Alec isn’t sure if it’s because of the injury or because of all the strangeness with the Nova crew, but it fades back to normal after a little bit.

What doesn’t go back to normal is the jobs they take. Despite Aleks whining about it in Alec’s ear every chance he gets, they keep running with the Nova crew. It’s mostly short things, just times when they need a few more hands, or they need to tap Aleks’ frankly ridiculous knowledge of explosives, but they add up.

Alec mostly ends up stuck with Hundar, sometimes Nova, and once with Lindsey during the closest thing to a car chase you can get during rush-hour city traffic. He goes with Aleks once because the safe they have him cracking ends up needing something more explosive to get into it, but other than that it’s usually him and one of their muscle. 

The sniper remains a presence in his ear, now, during jobs. It’s almost like they broke some seal, because where he wasn’t talking at all it’s suddenly constant. Just little things, like observations of the perimeter, or chatting with Lindsey while the two of them sit outside the main scene. 

He’s got a weird sense of humor, but Alec finds himself warming to it quickly. He also has pretty stellar aim, even for how much Aleks likes to call out his shaky hands - he manages a headshot on a merc who almost brains Hundar with a steel pipe, and two shots to the gut on a dude who gets half a punch in on Alec.

And through it all Aleks - softens. Maybe that’s not the right word for it, but it’s the first thing Alec thinks of, sitting at the kitchen table working on some shit on his laptop and watching Aleks argue with Nova over the phone. It’s not his normal arguing, the usual sharpness is strangely missing. Alec actually catches him laugh, once, a dumb snort-giggle that he usually reserves for their movie nights, and when they pass by dogs on the street.

Things are going well, in short. 

So, obviously, that’s when their fucking apartment gets burnt down.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> work was closed for snow so here's a new chapter - ignore my slow extending of the chapter number, pls. i get wordy.
> 
> thank u to those who have left kudos and comments, also! i really appreciate them, especially comments- they help me make sure im still on the right track.

Alec’s backpack thumps heavy on his back as he runs, but he can barely feel the weight. It’s cold for Los Santos, maybe forty degrees, and his hairline is damp with sweat. Ahead of him, Aleks almost blends in with the dark street in his leather jacket and hat, and Alec has to squint to make sure he’s following him.

He’d grabbed his glasses in a rush off the table by his bed before they left, but he hadn’t put them on. He didn’t want to pause for the second it would take to get them out of the panic bag he had thrown them in.

The sirens of the fire trucks and ambulances are fading away behind them, although Alec’s ears are still ringing as loud as ever. He follows Aleks down a short street and then up to a graffiti-covered metal grate in front of what looks like the entrance to a closed parking garage.

“Up,” Aleks grunts, doing something too fast for Alec to follow with the thick chain and lock that was holding the grate down, and Alec stoops to help him pull it up and over the entrance. “In, go, I’m following.”

Alec ducks and slips through the opening, and listens to the grate crash back down behind him as Aleks lets it drop. “What - where are we - ?”

“Here.” Aleks’ words are bitten-off, and he grabs Alec by one arm to haul him back to one corner of the garage. “We have to make some plans.”

They end up in front of a car, with a license plate Alec doesn’t recognize. If it’s one of theirs then he had no idea, but Aleks seems to unlock it easy enough. The front seats are empty when Alec slides into the passenger seat, but when he looks over his shoulder the back seats are piled with what looks at first like junk.

A closer, squinting, look reveals at least four stuffed backpacks, one of those small carry-on suitcases, and a tangle of wires spilling out of a plastic tub tucked between the seats.

He looks back over as Aleks sits down in the driver’s seat and shuts the car door heavily. The parking garage has automatic lights that flicked on when they walked through, but they’re sparsely placed and yellow-tinted, leaving things dim. Aleks has deep shadows beneath his eyes, almost the same color as the swipe of ash that cuts across one side of his jaw.

They sit in silence for a long moment before it shatters, and Aleks slams his palms on the steering wheel. “Fuck!” His voice breaks on the word.

Alec awkwardly digs his glasses out of his backpack and slips them on. The world in new focus means that things seem incredibly, incredibly dim all of a sudden. “What’s, uh. What’s the plan?”

“Give me a second, Alec, it takes some time to backtrack after your _fucking base_ gets targeted.” Aleks slams his hands one more time, although the fact that he avoids the car horn means he still has some presence of mind, and when he lifts them back up he presses his palms to his eyes. “Who fuckin’ did this. We live on the _seventh floor_ , no fucking _way_ this was an accident.”

It hadn’t been an accident. That was pretty clear, even when they were still in a daze and getting the lay of the land when Aleks had first shook him awake. It was barely past three in the morning, and it was one of the rare nights when Alec would actually be able to get a full night’s sleep like a normal person.

Then, he’d woken to Aleks, frantic and shoving his backpack in his hands and talking a mile a minute about the police, and the smell of smoke.

Whoever it was had targeted the main living area through the windows, probably, and that whole side of the apartment had been a mess of licking flames as Alec rushed out after Aleks. They had already been able to hear fire engines from outside at that point, and at the sound of sirens Aleks had doubled the pace.

“We’re not getting fucking pinned on the amount of shit we have in that apartment,” Aleks had hissed over his shoulder when Alec tried to slow down. “The lease is under a fake name but the guns and money are _definitely_ trackable.” He had grabbed Alec’s wrist in a vice-like grip and practically dragged him down the stairwell to the exit, the back of his neck pink with heat. “There’s no regrouping Immortal if we’re both fucking _locked up_.”

Now, with the rest of their apartment either smoldering to ashes or getting picked through by emergency services, Alec just tips his head against the back of his seat and lets Aleks press his hands to his eyes and breath.

“Would you believe I’ve been meaning to get a backup base?” Aleks’ voice has lowered to an almost normal tone now, but when Alec glances to check his knuckles are still balled up tightly, going white at the joints. “Was just - I figured, maybe when we had some more people, it would. We could look into it then.”

Alec swallows thickly. He can still taste the smoke in the back of his throat. “No worries, boss. We’ll, uh. We have a lot tied up in our accounts, anyways. Plus we have some favors to call in - the Pine still owe us for the job we ran for them a few months back - “

“We’re not working with the _Pine_ right now,” Aleks spits, dropping his hands from his eyes and turning to look at Alec. “They’ve always been just one step away from going full-on rogue. No way am I letting them know we’re weak and ready for poaching.”

“What, them? They barely have their own shit together, they can’t handle trying to take over anyone else’s.”

“That’s what they fucking want you to think. Either way, they’re all insane. I don’t trust them as far as I could throw them.”

“Might be able to throw them pretty far. Suptic’s a skinny dude.”

That earns him a pretty half-hearted snort, but it’s enough to make Alec’s stomach untwist itself a bit. “Sure, but then that freakin’ attack dog of his would get my ass blown up. Cib’s the one you have to watch out for.”

“Don’t they have that ex-military dude?”

“Nah, he’s a joke.” Aleks lets out another breath, deeper, and shoves his hands into the pocket of his sweatshirt. “So no, we’re not trying the Pine.” He makes a face. “We’ve got a few other favors I’ve been avoiding calling in. But first,” he says, and digs a set of keys out of his pocket before starting the car. “Let’s get the fuck out of dodge, huh?”

They weave out of the garage, Alec jumping out to open and close the entrance grate one more time, and onto the streets. It’s aimless, as far as Alec can tell, just driving to be away. The more they move the more his stomach sinks as it really settles in just what happened.

All he has left in Los Santos is either sitting in his backpack on his lap, or something that Aleks managed to squirrel away in the back of the car. Even if the fire got put out before everything was ruined, no doubt the police would cord the whole scene off once they found the first of Aleks’ armory, or one of the strung-together territory maps he always had Alec update. There was probably no going back.

It feels - weird. A little bit like it hasn’t caught up to him yet. He’d moved to inner-city Los Santos from some small-time rings just outside the city once he’d made enough of a name for himself, and Aleks had basically swooped in from day 1 to get the new kid who was driving every ATM inspector this side of the state line insane. Alec hadn’t realized it, but since then and now the Immortal base apartment had been the closest thing to home he’d had in a while.

And now. Fuck.

He zones out a little bit, forehead pressing into the cold glass of the window even though Aleks will bitch about leaving oil smudges. When he tunes back in Aleks is talking lowly into his phone, sitting and waiting for a light to turn green even though there’s no one else on the road.

“No, that’s fine. Seriously, I don’t care, anything works.” Aleks’ jaw is tight when Alec looks over at him, and he rolls his eyes over in his direction. “Sure. Yeah, the kid’s fine, I told you.” His fingers tap on the steering wheel and the light changes. “‘S gonna take more than a little petty arson to get rid of us, you can be sure of that.”

They drive some more, and Alec can just barely make out a voice speaking on the other end of the line. “Oh, for fuck’s sake - it’s not a _sleepover_ , they don’t have to wait up for us. I’m gonna hang up. We can find somewhere else, we can find a _hotel_. No, stop, shut up. Fine.” He takes a hard right turn, and Alec barely keeps his head from slamming into the window. “Yeah, I still know the address. Meet us outside.”

Aleks hangs up with all the force you can hang up on someone when you’re just pressing a button and tosses the phone to the side, where it hits Alec in the chest before falling in his lap.

“So…”

“I didn’t hire you for the sass, Paul.” Aleks shoves his hair back with one hand while the other grips the steering wheel and takes them on another quick turn. “You should be happy. We’re going to your favorite crew’s place.”

“My favorite? What’s my - oh, shit. Nova?”

“See? You admit it.” Aleks wags a finger at him. “Don’t get any ideas, and don’t act smart. This is a temporary measure.” He heaves out a breath, like talking to Nova on the phone has physically exhausted him. “I’m not exactly in love with the idea of leaving a credit trail for hotels, if the cops actually get more information than I think they will from the apartment. Nova owes us some, and we can be in and out of there easier than any other crew’s place.”

“Makes sense to me, boss.”

Turns out Nova crew is stationed in an even nicer part of town than they were. Of course, this is Los Santos, so ‘nice’ mostly means that it’s populated more with white collar mobsters and less with graffiti artists and casual gas station robbers, but deep down people are the same. They pass the office building that Alec recognizes from one of the first jobs they ran with Nova, and he tightens his grip on his backpack as they go.

After what feels like ages, Aleks pulls into a street parking spot on a side street, just between a laundromat and a shuttered corner store. “Alright.” He shuts the engine off but then just holds the wheel for another moment. “Okay.”

Alec eyes him warily. His skin looks paler than normal against the black of his hoodie and the baseball cap he’d pulled on before leaving the apartment, because for some reason that was an important thing to save before escaping a house fire. “Y’got something on your face, boss.”

Aleks shoots him a glare and curses at him in Russian - Alec’s known him long enough to know that it’s a curse, but not much more than that. He wipes at one side of his face, then the other one that actually has the ashy streak on it. “I’m going to seriously regret this, I know it.”

They both almost jump out of their seats when someone taps on the driver’s side window. Aleks lets out another stream of grumbled Russian when they turn and Nova is standing there, grinning sunnily, hair a curly mess around his shoulders.

“Aren’t you both a sight for sore eyes,” he’s saying as Alec gets out of the passenger’s side, slinging his backpack on. Nova holds out a gloved hand to Aleks, who ignores it in favor of slamming the driver’s door and shoving his hands back in his pockets. “Looks like you managed to get away only slightly singed.”

Aleks scowls deeper and wipes at that spot on his jaw again. “I told you, we can still find somewhere else.”

“And I told you fuck that. We’ve got plenty of room.” Nova shoots Alec a nod and starts to push Aleks down the sidewalk. “Us low-lives have to stick together.”

Low-lives my ass, Alec thinks, and consciously tries to not grind his teeth together when they end up in an elevator. Nova ends up leading them to a fucking penthouse.

“Home sweet home,” he shoots over his shoulder as he unlocks the front door. It’s complicated, and involves both a fingerprint and an access code. Alec feels a little bit like he should be blindfolded or something. “C’mon in.”

Aleks pushes ahead before Alec, who stumbles after him. “Oh, wow. Glad to see your sense of interior decorating hasn’t changed any.”

Nova laughs loudly and Alec rubs his eyes as he flips the lights on. They’ve walked into a space between a sitting room and a kitchen, with doorways branching off past the kitchen that lead to dark hallways. The sitting room itself looks cozy and lived-in, and it’s already clear that more than just two people live here - there’s a wrinkled sweatshirt draped over the arm of the sofa, and a few forgotten mugs on the coffee table. A tangled mess of Xbox controllers sits underneath the TV stand, and an actual gas fireplace is installed in one wall.

The sofa is also a fucking hideous, squashed in the center, cow print.

“Where did you even _find_ that thing,” Alec says before he can think about it, and earns himself another Nova laugh and slap on the back.

“Garage sale. Isn’t it perfect?” Nova heads past them and into the kitchen, which is mostly clean, and opens the fridge. “Here, you guys probably need these.” He straightens up with two water bottles, and tosses them Alec’s direction.

Alec catches them both and tries to hand one off to Aleks, who ignores it. “Is anyone else here?”

“Just Lindsey.” Nova’s mouth twitches downwards but he shuts the fridge door anyways, and leans against the counter. “Hundar and Jakob are out tying up some loose ends. They’ll be back in a little bit.” He folds his arms in front of his chest and his frown deepens. It makes his eyebrows draw in and low, and Alec nervously uncaps one of the bottles of water and almost drains it in one go - his throat was scratchier than he thought. “So who wants you two cremated, huh?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” Aleks yanks out one of the mismatched chairs around the kitchen table and sits down heavily, back to rubbing his eyes. “It was a pretty shoddy job, honestly. They definitely didn’t care that much about killing us.”

“Probably a good thing. Did you get a good look at the actual fire? Explosives, electrical, molotov cocktails, what do you think?”

“Probably cocktails. They got in through the windows.” Aleks drags his hands down his face and frowns at the tabletop. “I don’t - we haven’t pissed anyone off that much, recently, right?”

Alec shifts from foot to foot, still clutching the two plastic water bottles. “I mean. We make a job of pissing people off, kind of.”

“Not fire-bombing pissed off, though.” Nova heaves himself off of the counter and moves to take a seat across the table from Aleks, with Alec hovering, standing, to the side of them. “That takes a special kind of love. And unless you two have been running some serious scorched-earth campaigns that haven’t hit my radar, I don’t know anyone who would want you two to hurt that much.”

“Right.”

“Right.” Alec watches as Nova’s eyes seem to search Aleks face for something, and it’s not clear whether he finds it or not when he lets out a breath and taps his knuckles on the table. “Well. Maybe let’s make that a project for tomorrow, figuring it all out, huh?”

“It already is tomorrow,” Aleks grumbles, but Alec can read him pretty well at this point, and he’s not committed to putting up a fight about this. “But sure, if you have to get your beauty sleep. Where are you putting us up?”

“Guest room.” Nova pushes the chair back with a scrape as he stands up, and he gestures towards Alec with his chin before leading them down that hallway stretching off from the kitchen. “Thought you might prefer that to sleeping on the couch.”

Alec snorts at first, thinking about the cow print, and then sobers when - yeah, Aleks would be one hundred times more comfortable sleeping in a room with a lock, even if Nova probably has a key somewhere. It makes his throat itch again, a little, the fact that Nova thought of that.

The actual guest room is pretty plain, with pale walls and a queen sized bed pushed into the corner. There aren’t any windows, and Alec realizes that’s probably another point in this room’s favor.

Aleks drops his backpack onto the bed with a thump, turning to Nova as Alec copies behind. “We’ll stay out of your way. We have to be out to meet with some of Geoff’s people tomorrow, anyways.”

“Be my guest.” Nova eyes Aleks for a beat longer before turning to Alec, face softening as he does. “I’m just down the hall, you can come find me if he starts hacking a lung out or something. Smoke inhalation’s no joke, dude.”

“Right. Thanks.”

Nova gives Aleks one more look before nodding and slipping out. The door shuts quietly behind him, and Alec flips the lock when Aleks jerks his head towards it. He goes to sit gingerly on the edge of the bed, next to where Aleks flops down.

Aleks, hands covering his face and legs hanging off the bed, grumbles though his fingers, “Convince me this wasn’t a big mistake, dude.”

Alec snorts and toes his sneakers off, kicking them towards the far wall before following Aleks’ lead and letting himself fall down on the bed too. “You seem to know far more than me about this crew’s deal, so that sounds like your job.”

Aleks lets out another pained groan. “Please, don’t bring that up. I’ve been really hoping you wouldn’t bring that up.”

“Hey, I can’t help that I’m observant as fuck.” Alec turns his head a degree to get a better look at him, glasses digging into the skin behind his ear. “You know Nova’s taste for interior design.”

“More like the lack thereof.” Aleks finally pulls his hands off his face and lets them rest on his stomach. “Listen. I’m old, I can’t be blamed for shit I did in my youth.”

“You’re not even thirty.”

“That’s basically sixty ‘round these parts.” He tilts a look at Alec, as if to see if he bought it, and groans again. “Look. We - we ran in a crew together for a little bit, ages ago.”

“What?”

“Like, barely even together! Totally periphery, really.” Aleks rolls his eyes when Alec gives him a disbelieving look. “We were acquaintances. Then the crew broke up, and we both split off our separate ways. He went and found Hundar and this crew, and I got Joe and Asher and - “ He stops.

Alec winces. Aleks seems immediately to withdraw in on himself, getting that stiff set to his jaw that he gets when people bring up - that mess. “And me, right, boss?”

That gets him a half-smile, but it’s better than what he usually gets when Aleks is like this. “Sure, kid. Get up and put your glasses somewhere before they snap. I’m gonna pass out.”

Since Alec met Aleks they’ve slept in the same twin sized motel bed on jobs a few times, so this one seems bigger than anything. Aleks shoves him over to take the side right up against the wall, so he can sleep nearest to the door.

Without windows it’s pitch black in the room when Aleks flips the light off. Alec buries his face in the pillows which smell like detergent and not much else. He listens to Aleks rustle around - they’re sleeping on top of the quilts, because Aleks is weird about a lot of things and sleeping in strange sheets is one of them.

When he closes his eyes he can see the glow of flames working their way up the far wall in their living room, eating away at the shitty impressionist painting Aleks has hanging over the couch that he got from some mobster ages ago for half his payment.

Then, he’s asleep.

 

Alec jerks awake when the weight on the other side of the bed disappears and he hears Aleks grumble himself into getting up. He rolls over, peels his eyes open and quietly watches Aleks struggle out of the sweatshirt he’s been wearing, cursing lowly.

“Shit smells like smoke,” he mumbles in Alec’s direction when he sees him looking, and tosses the sweatshirt onto the ground. “You alright?”

Alec folds his hands on his chest and thinks about that for a moment. “Yeah, um. I think so.”

Aleks nods, checks his phone, and then slaps at the mattress next to Alec’s foot. “Looks like we got a good five hours in. C’mon, up and at ‘em. We gotta greet our captors.”

There’s a bustle of noise from the kitchen area as Aleks unlocks and opens the bedroom door, Alec trailing close behind him. He’s nervous, stupidly. Seeing the Nova crew in the shadow of Los Santos, or in the darkness of their kitchen past midnight was one thing - this feels like another.

The noise dips, and then goes still as Aleks leads the way and through the doorway into the kitchen. “Look at the Brady Bunch here,” he snorts, and reaches behind to tug Alec after him. “Morning, folks.”

Alec peers around Aleks’ shoulder. Nova has his hair down still but it’s damp, and he looks fuckin’ pleased as anything to see them. Lindsey glances up, startled, from a newspaper next to him at the kitchen table, and he can just see Hundar past them sitting in the corner of that awful couch.

“You survived the night!” Nova elbows Lindsey, who gives him a look. “Told you I wasn’t kidding.”

“I believed you, I just didn’t realize the strays you took in were human beings.” She flaps the newspaper to straighten it out but shoots Alec a small smile. “Fire, huh?”

“It’s not a fun time,” he responds, weakly, still feeling a little bit like a kid hiding behind his mom at the doctor’s office. “Thanks, again.”

“No problem,” Nova responds for her, and waves a loose hand towards the kitchen counter. “There’s coffee and shit, if you want.”

“Never let it be said you’re not a good hostess, Nova,” Aleks grumbles, but walks right by it and drags out a chair at the table to sit across from Lindsey.

Alec, who would actually like some coffee, thanks, sullenly follows. He still feels gross, like he’s covered in a thin film of smoke and sweat, but he pushes past it - he’s been around these people covered in blood and someone else’s guts, this should be nothing.

Nova’s looking at Aleks closely when Alec drops down in the chair across from him, and he seems to come to some sort of conclusion because he shrugs and knocks a fist lightly against the table. “We can do away with the code names here, Aleks. No wires, no bugs. I promise.”

Alec stiffens, and glances over at Aleks. Aleks, for his part, doesn’t react immediately to that. The collar of the wrinkled v-neck he was wearing underneath the sweatshirt is stretched out from too many washes, and Alec can see the beginnings of his chest piece and the tender-pink of his mark before it cuts off with the black of the shirt.

Alek raises one hand, idly, and touches the back of it against the pink skin on the side of his neck before answering. “James, I think you’ve known me long enough to know that I don’t buy people’s word for it for these kinds of things.”

Nova - James - barks out a laugh as if it was surprised from him. “Fuck you, man. I’m trustworthy as hell.”

“It’s true,” Hundar pipes up from the couch. “He totally doesn’t bug Geoff every other week about what jobs you two are running. Because that would be creepy.”

“Hey, fuck you too, Brett,” James shouts over his shoulder, and Alec watches as Brett, who’s apparently Hundar, who’s also apparently the kind of guy who wears muscle tees in the middle of winter, laughs his ass off and switches the channel on the TV.

“Sounds like a party in here.”

The part of Alec that likes to know exactly where the exits are and how many people are in a building at any given time startles, but he manages to turn around and look back the direction of the voice, back towards the hallway where the bedrooms are, in what he figures is a very chill and not panicked manner.

The guy leaning against the door frame almost seems to fill it entirely up - vertically, that is, while his arms are folded in front of him. He’s wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, having apparently made more of an effort than anyone else in the room to dress themselves that morning, or maybe just had never changed from the night before. He’s got high cheekbones, short, curly hair, and glasses.

He’s completely unfamiliar, but with a sinking feeling Alec realizes that he knows exactly who he is.

Jakob, the sniper, takes one look at the scene in the kitchen and raises his eyebrows almost dramatically high. “Damn, boss, you didn’t tell me we had _company_.” He cocks his head to the side a degree and before Alec knows it he’s looking straight at him.

If something changes in his expression, any sign of recognition, it’s minute enough that Alec can’t place it immediately, but something sends his spine stiffening.

They look at each other for a few seconds, and then Jakob breaks into a toothy grin. “Hey bro. Fall off any buildings lately?”


End file.
